As a matter of fact, YES! In doing research, being vendor-neutral implies, in part, that the order of the results set is impartial, and not biased toward any one information provider. A results set partial to an information vendor, source or database could cripple a serious research endeavour, particularly if a vital component of research is missed, hidden, or dropped due to a biased display of results, with a particular vendor’s results bubbling to the top. In addition, being vendor-neutral implies a design approach compatible with different technologies, and a company philosophy that is willing to integrate with a broad spectrum of sources, technologies and products.

Back in 2010, our CEO and CTO Abe Lederman questioned the bias of information vendors in light of Google’s possible “preferential placement” in search results — “If Google Might Be Doing It…” He asks, “If Google is being accused of such bias, might not EBSCO or ProQuest also have a bias?”

Deep Web Technologies recently received an email inquiry from someone looking, very specifically, for a vendor-neutral search service.

“We’re looking for a no vendor biased, easily applied and customised, reliable federated search. Can you help?”

The short answer is ABSOLUTELY! Vendor-neutrality is a Deep Web Technologies specialty and a core value. In addition to the Deep Web Technologies simple setup and deployment process and our next-generation single-search technology, we believe strongly that no vendor, information provider, database or source should be weighted differently, return results more frequently, or appear highlighted in any way UNLESS requested by you, our customer. The choice to assign different databases a higher or lower ranking should be dictated by you. It is your search, after all.